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Monday, December 28, 2009

Are There Monsters Under Your Bed?

Usually the demon under my bed is so busy battling dust bunnies it doesn’t bother me too much. Except now. I’m about to flip the calendar to a new page in a new year. That means a particular deadline is going to boing off the page like a jack-in-the-box and slap me silly.

I agreed to do something, knowing full well the timing would be a challenge. That’s proving to be true. The demon knows this as well as I do, so it taunts me with the one weapon I can’t ignore:

“Sure you’ll get it done. But it won’t be Perfect.” Shudder.

Yes, I’m a recovering perfectionist. It’s been 30 years since I was perfect, but I still take it one day at a time. And I do pretty well, except for one type of situation. You guessed it. That’s what I agreed to.

The world won’t stop rotating on its axis if I don’t excel at each and every one of the unrealistic goals I set for myself with this project. The only one disappointed will be me. And even that is something I could control, to some extent. If that darn demon would just pipe down.

The only way that’s going to happen is if I take drastic measures. This is where my husband says, “You mean, do all the stuff you would have your students do?” Exactly. So for the next few days I’m going to post that stuff – not my specific situation, but the process I use for working around the monster.

4 comments:

I know what you mean about trying to be perfect. I can drive myself crazy when working on a quilt, I want perfection, the funny thing is I am the Only one who knows it is not perfect, to everyone else it looks wonderful.

Good point, Jean, about being the only one who sees the imperfection. My dad's a woodworker, and almost everything he's made for me when he gave it he apologized for all the things that were "wrong" -- but they're beautiful!